With the festive season now in full swing, I’m finding precious little time for painting. Anytime I do get, I’m still drawn to much sunnier scenes than we’re currently experiencing here in the UK. This is another Barcelona view which has been on my ‘to paint’ list for a long time but I’ve never quite …
I had no idea that Dieppe was going to prove to be so richly enjoyable and rewarding as a subject! Now I know that this is only my second painting of Dieppe but the two have already become amongst my favourites of late! If the story of my painting is one of two steps forward …
I originally set out to tackle last week’s subject of Picadilly Circus in London again. I’ve been plumbing the depths of my watercolour knowledge with what I’d do differently and do have some sound ideas but as I started to sketch it out, my heart just sank. I just didn’t have any enthusiasm to take …
This feels like a bit of a postscript to last week’s post where I felt I was ticking along nicely right up until the end when I added in one wash too many and somewhat ‘killed’ it! With this second attempt, I was mindful of working as quickly as possible, and to being a little bolder …
Continuing my efforts to seek out local delights (well, the things that delight me at least) I went in pursuit of something a little less flimsy and chocolate-boxy than last week’s post. I don’t know why, and don’t think it’s a rule of thumb of any sort, but the painting I featured in last week’s …
Aside from the plain and simple truth of ‘spend more time painting’ – the single most effective thing I could do to improve, is to spend more time painting on location, plein air. Unfortunately my circumstances – primarily work and family commitments – make this difficult. I was however recently inspired to make an extra …
Toward the end of last week I was catching up on some blogs that I’ve missed of late and came across a new post from the great watercolor artist Edo Hannema. I really enjoy Edo’s posts, partly because I respect and admire his paintings, and partly because he’s so generous with his advice and wisdom …
In fact, at its most sweetly succinct, this post could just read: I did a painting this week – and I was really pleased with it. But that’d be too brief even for my liking. I do feel however, that some of my recent posts have been far too long and wordy so it feels …
I had to look this cafe up on google maps’ street view to find out its name as despite taking a lot of photographs here, I didn’t take any that included its name. It’s located on the corner of Notre-Dame, (and is visible, from it’s red awnings, on my recent Notre-Dame efforts). Sadly the light was …
After last week’s Paris in the sunshine post, here’s a complete contrast, Lisbon in the rain! The reference photo was taken on the same New Year holiday that my ill-fated Lisbon tram efforts were based and again, I’ve hung on to this for about ten years thinking that one day… it might make a painting… Here’s a …
